Watch a 19-Year-Old Kanye West Freestyle At Fat Beats

Yeezus wasn’t even a word and Kim K was still in high school when Kanye West, still trying to earn his street cred, popped into the now-closed Fat Beats storefront in Greenwich Village in August of 1996. Now on the 20th anniversary of Fat Beats inception, the store manager-turned “Rap Is Outta Control” radio host, DJ Eclipse released some grainy footage he took way back when of Ye, already plenty cocky but a masterful freestyler, doing what he still does best. It’s refreshing, seeing the current king of rap in a low-fi 480 pixels, and an incredible time-capsule for a store that played host to what would become the next generation of a genre.